It’s crazy to believe that Snapchat is coming in on 5 years old. We have seen it undergo some serious changes within the years. The addition of the daily-changing face filters really made Snapchat set itself apart because the general masses are still currently stunned at face-recognition software. Also, the geo-filters became a huge success as each town became represented through creative designs. But one thing that really makes Snapchat unique is the “hidden view count”. The fact that you can see who views your Snap Story, and gives you a number is great. However, the thing that Snapchat should never touch and keep the same is that your audience cannot see how many people have viewed your story. On all other social media platforms, you can see how many people have liked or shared a certain post. Even on Facebook videos, you can see how many people have viewed the same thing you have. But on Snapchat, you are the only one that gets to see how many people have viewed your content, and I think that should stay the way it is. If you see that 30 people or, even, 30 million people have viewed the same Snapstory you have, then that special connection is gone. For instance, when a celebrity on Snapchat says: “I love you so much. Thank you for supporting me along the way.”, and then you see that 500,000 other people watched the video, then that message feels less personal and less special. But when that number is nonexistent, then you might feel like that Snap was going straight to you. Of course you know that many other people are watching the same video, but you don’t have a number to prove it.
Yet, there is one Snapchat feature that must be changed, and is in the same line of thought as the hidden view count. I cannot figure out for the life of me why Snapchat refuses to let us see how many followers you have. If you can see how many people view your story, then why not have the final and total count of how many people that have decided to follow your account?! This is literally a marketing nightmare. As someone who started a Snapchat account for a large organization, I want to report how we are doing and that means knowing how many people are following the account. Sure I can report who is actually viewing the stories, but how hard is it to have the grand number as well? The only way to get this number is going through and counting every single person, or, you could use an online tool that tries to analyze how many followers you have by seeing how many people actually view your story. Whether the number that they produce is accurate or not, is up for debate.
Anyways, these are my thoughts on what should stay and what should change. Stay tuned for more of my thoughts on social media platforms.
